Mario Maker and Project Guard delay thins Wii U schedule

If you're a Wii U owner holding out hope that 2015 can match the banner year that was 2014, you'll have to wait a bit longer for it to kick into gear. Nintendo revealed as in its latest investor materials that both Mario Maker and Shigeru Miyamoto's Project Guard are no longer planned for release in the first half of 2015.

If you weren't aware, Mario Maker is a level creation toolkit, which allows players to create and share their own stages built from the basic elements of the 2D Mario universe. Project Guard (its working title) is a new game from Shigeru Miyamoto which tasks players with defending a base from robotic invaders while swapping between security cameras.

Both Wii U titles now have a more-nebulous "2015" date assigned to them, along with Star Fox Wii U, Xenoblade Chronicles X, Devil's Third, and The Legend of Zelda Wii U. You can still expect to see Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Tipping Stars, Mario Party 10, Splatoon, Yoshi's Woolly World, and Project Giant Robot to release in the first half of 2015 - Kirby and the Rainbow Curse/Paintbrush is first half in the US, second half in Europe.

The general concept of '2015' already sounded pretty good for first-party Wii U games, but it's a bit worrying to see the big-ticket items seemingly bunching up in the back half - seeing as there's a very strong possibility that a couple of them won't release this year at all…